Racial Identity Contestation: Mapping and Measuring Racial Boundaries

Survey based research typically uses a single measure of racial self-classification to study racial inequality and to make group based comparisons. Race, however, is multidimensional; experienced not only in accord with how one self-identifies, but also in relation to how one is perceived racially by others. For example, an individual can self-identify racially as Black, but be perceived by most others as non-Black. We refer to this experience as racial identity contestation. We briefly review the growing set of literature on related topics, detail the divergent approaches to measuring racial identity contestation with survey data, and compare descriptive estimates of racial identity contestation across methodological approaches. Moreover, we seek to cull others into considering the analytic utility of racial identity contestation for research on racial boundaries. We argue that a focus on racial identity contestation can be leveraged as an analytical tool to better understand the topography of ongoing racial projects by mapping social definitions of who is and is not typically perceived as a member of a particular racial group.